Staffing

Religious Education is taught by the following members of staff ;

Mrs N Bell

Head of Humanities

Mr D Phillips

Head of Department

Miss R Farrington

RE

Mr C Hughes

History/RE

Aims

The schemes of work intend to foster and enhance the skills of Reflection, Enquiry, Interpretation, Empathy, Reasoning, Evaluation, and Communication and the positive attitudes to self, others, the natural world. They take into account Literacy, Numeracy, ICT, and Independent Learning skills.

The aims are as follows:

To enable pupils to develop spiritually by building upon their personal, spiritual and religious experiences and by validating spirituality;

To contribute to the development of each pupils beliefs and values;

To broaden pupils knowledge and understanding of religion and religions;

To encourage empathy by providing opportunities for pupils to see important aspects of life from a variety of worldviews;

To provide pupils with enough knowledge of religions for them to make sense of the political current affairs in the world;

To reinforce the importance of being respectful of other peoples beliefs;

To provide a firm grounding in the history, beliefs and practices of Christianity;

To demonstrate the importance of religion in all societies throughout time;

To enable pupils to learn to argue logically while understanding and evaluating other points of view.

The schemes of work for RE is designed around both the Staffordshire Agreed Syllabus, and the QCA suggested schemes of work at Key Stage 3. At Key Stage 4 the department follows a short course GCSE course aimed at all students.

Special Educational Needs

There is a link teacher in the Religious Education department identified every year whose role is to attend the SEN meetings every month to keep the department updated in regards to the pupils on the SEN register;

Students on the register have an Individual Education Plan to which the teacher should be aware of and make subject specific targets for each pupil on an IEP;

Where Teaching Assistants are in lessons, class teachers should make available to these a lesson plan in advance and assign the TA a specific role if appropriate. For example, working with small groups of pupils who are struggling or need more attention;

Key words are used, and so are writing frames for less able students. Both open and closed writing materials should be made available. Questioning should be relevant to the ability of the pupils, and use more closed questions to attain information for less able pupils;

SEN students are to be highlighted in teachers registers and should be referred to when planning lessons or units. Lesson Plans should indicate those with SEN and how those pupils are to be handled. Staff are to be aware of and note reading ability and ages when planning and teaching lesson;

Inclusion

To help with inclusion in the Religious Education department, we:

Provide pupils with clear statements of learning objectives;

Check the level of both written and verbal language used in the classroom;

Use model answers and sentence starters;

Use of differentiated worksheets;

Provide a variety of tasks that do not rely exclusively on written responses but make use of discussion, role play, art work, group and paired work and ICT activities.

HOW CAN PARENTS HELP?

Parents can help their children in a number of ways.

Talk to their child about what they have been studying in class;

Ensure that all homework is completed;

Watch the news with your child. This may seem pointless, but it is of great worth. It helps the child understand what is happening in the world from different points of view. Ethical and moral issues are discussed in class and it will help your child understand most of the main issues studied;

Discuss global issues such as poverty, war and peace, the environment etc;

Help you child to have an opinion that they can back up with reasons and evidence.